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  ‘To be honest, that’s about the size of it, Mrs Lacey,’ replied the inspector, hard but truthful.

  ‘Oh, God, Thomas, whatever are we going to do?’

  ‘What you need to do,’ Hardy advised them, ‘is to stay calm and answer our questions. So, what did she have for tea before she went out?’

  ‘She just had a slice of pizza and a cup of tea, she has a full meal at school,’ answered Mrs Lacey.

  ‘Now, I want you to go through her wardrobe and tell me if any of her clothes are missing.’

  ‘But she was dressed in jeans when she went out. Oh, do you think she might have run away? But why? I can’t think of any reason. I mean, the three of us always get on very well.’

  ‘She had her rucksack with her when she went. She could have had anything in that. Just check for me, please, so that we can assure ourselves that that probably hasn’t happened. Please.’

  ‘I’ll go, Thomas,’ said Mrs Lacey. ‘I know what she’s got and where she keeps it.’ She passed the searching uniformed officers on the landing, on their way downstairs to examine the ground floor, the garden and garage; garden sheds and shelters would not be exempt from their prying hands and eyes, either.

  Entering the first bedroom on the right, Mrs Lacey opened the door and said, ‘This is Genni’s room. Where shall I start?’

  INTERLUDE – FLASHBACK

  The girl reached a woozy consciousness sufficient to inform her that her legs were bound at the ankles, her tied wrists behind her back. It was dark wherever she was, but she was lying on a very hard floor and the place smelled terrible. She had no memory of the night before, not after entering the pub and showing her fake ID, and had no idea how she could have got here, or why; or, for that matter, who would have put her here and bound her hand and foot.

  One of the last things she noticed was that her knickers were gone and that her already short shirt was round her thighs. She felt a pain between her legs, and had the sinking feeling that something terrible had happened to her. She’d only gone to the pub last night for a dare and, when she got home, she was going to ring the members of her little gang and tell them what she’d done.

  Tears stung her eyes as she was overcome by a wave of self-pity. Why weren’t her parents here to rescue her? Then she realised that not only had she never told them where she was really going, she didn’t even have any idea how much time had passed since she went into the pub.

  If her hands hadn’t been bound, she’d phone them, and maybe they could get the signal traced, but a quick wriggle around revealed the fact that her phone was no longer in the pocket of her jacket. Although this was undone, as was her blouse, she could make out that there was unlikely to be anything in her pockets at all. They felt completely empty. Maybe there would be other people nearby, and she’d just been left here until somebody stumbled upon her. She took a deep breath and called for help.

  Within a few seconds of her voice echoing around the confines of the building, a metal door grated against the floor nearby, and she knew she wasn’t alone any more. She felt paralysed with fear. Whoever had taken her didn’t seem to have deserted her at all. She could hear footsteps in the darkness and the sound of voices whispering, feet descending metal stairs then crossing the concrete towards her.

  ‘There she is, fresh as a daisy, and just ready for round two. Ready, lads? Put the light on, for fuck’s sake. How are we going to be able to enjoy ourselves if we can’t see her?

  A bare lightbulb was illuminated high above her from a metal ceiling, and she saw four men surrounding her, each face wearing an evil leer. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she squeaked, her voice high and hoarse at the same time. Only then did she realise how dry her mouth was, and how sore her throat.

  ‘We’re gonna show you a good time, little darlin’’ said one of them, reaching down to fondle one of her budding breasts.

  ‘Stop that. I don’t like it,’ she shouted, this time even more croakily, fear thrumming through her body like an electric current.

  ‘You can scream as much as you like, sweetie. Nobody’s gonna hear you out here. Right, get her clothes off.’ At this point she thought they were at least going to untie her, but instead, someone took a wicked looking knife out of his jacket pocket and bent down to cut her clothes away from the front of her upper body.

  Another one of them had removed a hypodermic needle from somewhere and was approaching her, while one of the others rolled her on to her side to expose the veins of one arm.

  ‘No,’ she screamed, wriggling in a desperate attempt to get away from these monsters.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted a voice. ‘Do we really need to do the first one with the volume down? Let’s have this one with the sound up. Get her legs undone and weight them down, so we can get them apart. I want to see her face as she realises what a good time we’re giving her. She ought to know what a lucky girl she is.’

  As the ties were removed from her ankles she felt urine leaving her body in her distress. This was no bad dream. This was no practical joke. This was real, and worse things than this were about to happen to her.

  ‘We can’t risk it. Sorry, lads, but you know the rules on takeaways. The one with the hypodermic advanced once more, she felt a sharp prick to the inside of her right elbow, and the coldness of fluid entering the warmth of her vein … then she knew no more as her struggling body slumped to complete immobility. She had just gone through the last goodnight without even a murmur.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ wailed Abi. ‘What are these clothes doing in her wardrobe? They look like a hooker’s clothes.’

  ‘How often do you go into her wardrobe, Mrs Lacey?’

  ‘Well … never. She always insists that she puts away her own clothes, so I just leave them on the bed for her when I’ve washed and ironed them. I’ve never seen any of these clothes before.’

  ‘Would you mind looking in her drawers too, please,’ asked Olivia, although she knew that if there was anything odd about their contents, the uniformed officers would have made a note of it.

  A top drawer in the dressing table held a collection of bright make-up. Green and mauve eyeshadows vied for space with hot pink, orange, and red lipsticks, and there were false eyelashes and several mascara wands. Foundation, powder and blusher completed this find, along with a couple of kohl pencils. Nestling in the underwear drawer had also been a spray bottle of what Mrs Lacey had referred to as ‘tarty perfume’, and an opened packet of condoms with one missing.

  ‘What the hell has my little girl been bullied into?’ This was a typical reaction – the denial that their daughter, nearly fifteen, would have obtained anything like this of her own accord, and the disbelief that she was growing up and that these were things that they should have discussed with her. Many parents seemed to believe in a perpetual innocence for their children, not understanding that there could be all sorts of monkey business going on under an outwardly calm surface.

  This was beginning to look very nasty, thought Hardy. ‘I shall need addresses and/or contact numbers for her closest friends. Has she got a Facebook account and, if so, can we have a look at it?’ the inspector asked, noticing a tiny table in the window that held a laptop.

  Wandering over to it, she asked casually, ‘Do you know your daughter’s password for this?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ replied Abi. ‘This is totally private to her, and she won’t let us anywhere near her when she’s on it.’

  ‘Do you mind if we take this away for examination?’ It was less of a request than an order, but worded politely, and an answer in the negative would have been immediately overruled. Hardy was convinced that the computer held the answer to what Genni had been up to the night before, and the sooner they could get it to the station, the sooner the files could be accessed, especially her Facebook page. They could usually learn an awful lot from that. People seemed to see what they wrote in there as sacred, like writing in a locked diary would have been in the fifties.<
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  ‘And she’s definitely got her mobile on her, has she?’

  ‘I’ve been ringing and ringing, and I just get sent to voicemail. I’ll try one more time, but it won’t make any difference. She saw it as some sort of protection – something that would keep her safe whatever – friends at the push of a button whenever she needed anything.’

  Lauren put the laptop into a large evidence bag and, after a few more questions, they took their leave, pinning all their faith on the computer. If they could get into that they’d have all they needed on what she and her friends were talking about and perhaps discover what she was planning to do. It was surprising what a bunch of teenagers who chatted on Facebook would say, thinking naively that everything they said was private.

  The Uniforms’ search had produced no clues as to where the young girl had gone but, thankfully, it hadn’t revealed a hastily stowed body either.

  Catching a quick lunch in the cafe next to the station where the coffee was more than drinkable, Hardy made a quick call to Hal to see how Ben was. Fortunately, Hal was somewhere where he didn’t have to turn off the phone, and gave her an update. The boy was doing well, but hadn’t reacted well to the visit from a shrink. The story their son told didn’t seem possible, but Hal said they’d discuss it later when they were both home. Promising to ring back when he’d been in again during the afternoon, he left his wife to it, knowing she had important enquiries on hand.

  Putting the phone back into her pocket, Olivia asked Lauren how things were at home. The younger woman’s face immediately fell. She had, for a while, been able to refocus her mind onto the case from her domestic crisis, and now it all came flooding back to her.

  ‘Kenneth’s going back to the Middle East in a couple of days, and he’s taking her with him. He says they’re going to live together out there, and he’d like them to have use of the annexe when they come back on leave, so he can stay in close contact with the children.’

  ‘He’s really taking the au pair to the Middle East? It wasn’t just bravado?’ Olivia was astounded.

  ‘So he says, and he said that we’d have to sort out selling the house so that he’s got enough capital to purchase the property they’ll need when they’ve got kids – but I’ve already told you all this. I’m afraid I’m rambling.’

  ‘As I said, he can’t do that!’ Olivia said, horrified.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ve spoken to the solicitor, and he says he can delay any sale of the property until the youngest is through university. Kenneth might get what he wants but it’s going to be a long time in the future, and in the meantime, he’ll just have to manage with what he’s already got. We’re going nowhere, and he can’t make us.’

  ‘Good for you. I bet you’ll be glad when they’ve both cleared off.’

  ‘I certainly will,’ replied the sergeant, staring into her cup sightlessly. She knew she had to get a grip on herself, as talking about the situation threatened her outward calm. She didn’t want to find herself bawling her eyes out in a café and be unable to go back to work after lunch. There was simply too much to do, especially after Genni Lacey’s disappearance.

  Olivia felt rather the same, after the emotional strain and stress she and Hal had been through over the last couple of days, and there were still tricky days to come, when Ben was home recuperating. Would he be willing to talk the situation through with them like an adult? Would he be willing to accompany her on a visit to the rehab centre, where he could see the harm that drugs could do, or would he want to sweep everything under the carpet as if nothing had happened? The latter was the more likely, she felt, given his personality.

  Changing the subject slightly, she asked Lauren what she was going to do about the children’s schooling, as keeping up the fees for private school was surely going to be too expensive.

  ‘I’m not going to fight Kenneth if he decides to take them out. There’s a village school not far from us, just outside Littleton-on-Sea, and it has a good reputation. It fought off closure just last academic year due to falling numbers, so I’m sure the head would be delighted to gain two more pupils. Then I don’t have to worry until they’re eleven.

  ‘I know there’s still the eleven-plus exam round here, and a grammar school within reach, and I’m sure they’re both bright enough to get through. It may not be the way I was educated, but it will probably be the best alternative to what I did have planned for them – and I would see a lot more of them. If I can be as good an example as Nanny and my parents were to me, I’m sure they’ll turn out all right.

  ‘The truth is, Olivia, I simply don’t know yet. If I am allowed to stay in the house for as long as I want, he might decide that he needs the school fees money towards his cosy little love nest. I’ll just have to try to achieve the best outcome that I can.’

  ‘You’ll carry on working, of course.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘I’ll have to, but I can always replace Gerda with a childminder and a cleaner which, even together, will cost a lot less than that little slut. I’m capable of looking after my own home and children, given a little help. I can see no reason why I should have to give up my career for the want of some domestic support. It was interrupted for long enough after I had the children. I don’t want to have to walk away from all the effort I’ve put in so far just because Kenneth can’t keep his dick in his trousers.’

  ‘Lauren!’

  ‘Well. That’s how I feel. It’s the old one-eyed trouser-snake again, and we know that they’ve been the cause of trouble since the Garden of Eden. Anyway, are you going in to see Ben after work?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am.

  ‘I wondered if I could come with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just for some friendly support.’

  ‘Well, in that case, why don’t you come home with me for a bite to eat after we’ve been there? Hal’s band’s playing tonight, and we could go and listen to him, maybe have a few drinks, listen to the music and catch a little distraction from all our worries, both personal and professional.’

  ‘Olivia, you’re a brick. I just need to get through the next couple of days. Whenever they know I’m in, those two go into an adolescent routine of canoodling very loudly, usually just the other side of the annexe entrance, and I’m heartily sick of it.’

  ‘It’s a date then. But we’d better get back and set some wheels in motion so that things don’t stagnate. We may not be intending to work through the night, but there’s no reason we can’t get the press officer to set up a public appeal and get a search party out. We can appeal to volunteers from the public to go through all the derelict buildings down by the river, and what’s left of the woods and agricultural land beyond the new developments. After all, she lived on one of those new estates. There’s nothing to say that she didn’t go missing from quite near home.’

  The television appeal was arranged for the six o’clock regional news, with Abi and Thomas Lacey in attendance. For the rest of the afternoon, Groves and Hardy carried on the interviewing of the detainees they had had to abandon that morning. By the end of the working day they had learnt precisely nothing from their suspects, who were all well-versed in the culture of ‘no comment’, but a police search was underway, and some officers had been diverted to the green in front of the promenade to wait for volunteers from the public to join them.

  The two detectives headed out to the hospital to visit Ben before returning to the Hardys’ cottage, leaving the lovebirds at the barn conversion to wonder where their usual audience had sloped off to.

  When they got back to the cottage, Hal had cooked up peas and rice with some of the goat meat he was able to get from an ethnic supermarket now, and they all ate heartily.

  ‘If you want to come in early with me, Leon’s coming over in the old bus. If we all go together with the band, we could all have a drink, and not have to worry about driving,’ he suggested as they were forking food eagerly into their mouths.

  ‘Get
that man to open a bottle of wine,’ declared Olivia, feeling that the relaxation from a few glasses of the grape would definitely help to chase away the blues.

  ‘Hey, we is on de toot, tonight,’ Hal answered, with a smile that included both of them. Just the thought of opening a bottle made the big man look slightly less strained.

  It was good to get away from both home and the station, but Olivia found her eyes drawn constantly towards the bar. It was where Hal, on his last gig here, had suspected illegal drugs might be being sold. There were two girls and a young man serving, and for quite a while all seemed innocent enough, but as the time wore on, she just happened to turn her head and saw what she thought was definitely a dodgy deal going on.

  The young barman looked both ways to see if he was being watched, at which point he dipped his gaze, then leaned over the bar and appeared to shake hands with one of the customers. The customer then put his hand in his pocket, as did the barman. There was definitely something to investigate there, in her opinion, and she intended to report what she had seen when she got back into the office. Maybe they could use some of their narcotics officers and organise a raid.

  For now, though, there was nothing she could do without causing an unholy ruckus and getting Hal and his band fired for being friends of the Plod as well as the evidence probably being spirited away and making her feel a fool. She decided to leave it to the people who knew how to handle these things.

  In the meantime, her son was improving, with the possibility that he might be able to come home in a day or two, and her level of anxiety had decreased considerably. Granted, there were still two cases of murder most ghastly to solve, and a missing girl to find, but then what was life in Littleton-on-Sea if not full of the low and downright unpleasant?

  All in all, they had a good night, with some really great music from the band. They had improved beyond recognition since she had last attended one of Hal’s gigs, and that must be why the group was so much in demand now. Making a conscious effort, she kept her mind empty of everything except enjoying herself. Towards the end of the evening however she noticed that Lauren was not drinking, and leaned over to shout into her ear to enquire why.